| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: confused and contradictory. To this end he had willingly
acquiesced in his removal to a large quiet establishment, with an
open space and trees about it, where he had found a number of
intelligent companions, some, like himself, engaged in preparing
or reviewing statements of their cases, and others ready to lend
an interested ear to his own recital.
For a time he was content to let himself go on the tranquil
current of this existence; but although his auditors gave him for
the most part an encouraging attention, which, in some, went the
length of really brilliant and helpful suggestion, he gradually
felt a recurrence of his old doubts. Either his hearers were not
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Royalty Restored/London Under Charles II by J. Fitzgerald Molloy: grievous in the eyes of his subjects, commended him to the hearts
of his courtiers, the common purpose of whose lives was pursuit
of pleasure. Never was sovereign more gracious to those who came
in contact with him, or less ceremonious with his friends; whilst
abroad he had lived with his little band of courtiers more as a
companion than a king. The bond of exile had drawn them close
together; an equal fortune had gone far towards obliterating
distinctions of royalty; and custom had so fitted the monarch and
his friends to familiarity, that on his return to England neither
he nor they laid aside a mutual freedom of treatment which by
degrees extended itself throughout the court. For all that, "he
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